The book starts in the year of stability A. Students are taken on a tour of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center and are shown the fertilizing rooms where either superior or inferior humans are created. Mr. Foster joins the group and takes them to see the bottling room and the decanting room. Each person created is labeled with his or her role from the start. The babies being created are not expected to read books and enjoy natures since it is believed to be a waste of time. The Beta babies are also taught to hate inferior beings and to avoid the superior Alphas. While Foster talks with the children one of the controllers, Mustapha Mond, enters and explains about the emotionless world and the drug soma that makes people feel euphoric.
Foster thinks Lenina is a perfect piece of meat and had a relationship with her. She likes Bernard so instead they are together. Later on Bernard asks her is she would go to the Savage Reservation with him. She waits and tells him her answer in a crowded elevator. Her answer was so straightforward that it made him uncomfortable. Bernard lacked confidence. Later on Lenina and Foster go on a helicopter ride. While on soma they dance and Bernard joins a group that wants to fuse together into one. He isn't serious about this group but was just there. After that Lenina hesitates about whether or not she should go with Bernard since he is so complicated but then realized that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend this reservation. She finds out he likes isolation and rejects using soma as a means of an escape mechanism.
Bernard then goes and gets validity from a Director to go to the reservation; he approves but tells him of how when he went he had left a girl there stranded. Finally, the two reach the reservation and listen to the warden. He allows them to leave but warns them that all of the gates are electrical. To calm him down, Bernard takes some soma and when he wakes up he is in the Valley of Malpais.